Times Square

Times Square in New York City. Formed by the intersection of Broadway, Seventh Ave., and 42d St., this famous square was named (1904) for the building there that formerly belonged to the New York Times. The building, located in the center of the square, is still famous for the outdoor news "zipper" that displays up-to-the-minute news. Times Square and the adjacent area form one of the most concentrated entertainment districts in the nation, featuring legitimate theaters, motion picture houses, shops, newsstands, bars, and restaurants. During the 1970s and 80s, the area became notorious for pornographic theaters and general tawdriness, but it was cleaned up and revived in the 1990s. Broadway at Times Square, jammed with traffic and illuminated by a profusion of enormous electrical signs, is known as the "Great White Way." On New Year's Eve, close to a million people congregate there to celebrate.

Bibliography: See studies by W. R. Taylor (1991) and J. Traub (2004).

Times Square a square in Manhattan, New York City, at the intersection of Broadway, 42nd Street, and Seventh Avenue; it is named after the building formerly occupied by the New York Times, which still transmits news flashes in lights on its façade. It is often taken as the type of an area of the entertainment industry in a major city.

Times Square Theatre, New York, on West 42nd Street. This opened in 1920 with Vajda's Fata Morgana, translated as The Mirage, which ran for six months. Several musical plays were followed by Channing Pollock's The Fool (1922), more successful outside New York than on Broadway, and Maeterlinck's Pelléas and Mélisande (1923) which, in spite of the performance of Jane Cowl, had only a short run. Charlot's Revue of 1924, with a large cast of London favourites, was, however, a success, as was Anita Loos's Gentlemen Prefer Blondes (1926), while The Front Page, a play about journalism by Ben Hecht and Charles MacArthur, ran for 281 performances in 1928–9. In 1931 came a long run of Coward's Private Lives, with the author, Gertrude Lawrence, Jill Esmond, and Laurence Olivier. The last play at this theatre before it became a cinema was Edward Roberts and Frank Cavett's Forsaking All Others (1933) which reintroduced Tallulah Bankhead to Broadway.